First a priest, always an educator

Oxford ... Miller captained Balliol to Head of the River victory. Photo: Supplied

'Miller for Pope! Miller for Pope!" was the chant of 200 men of Balliol College as they thumped their tankards on the table at a Boat Club dinner in Oxford over 50 years ago. Balliol's boat crew had been Head of the River that year, under their Captain of Boats, a tall young Australian priest, Julian Miller, said to be the first Catholic priest admitted to the college since the Protestant Reformation.

At Oxford his tutors had enjoyed an academic joke by setting him to study the Reformation, and by appointing Christopher Hill, a well-known communist, as his moral tutor. While at Oxford he said daily Mass in the Catholic chaplaincy. At the same time his studies, combined with friendships developed at Balliol and inter-church contacts made travelling in Europe, prepared him for the ecumenical work awaiting him as a priest in Sydney.

Julian Miller … path to the priesthood began with veterinary science. He was later enthused by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Photo: Supplied

Before returning home Miller spent six months visiting many parts of the US after winning a scholarship. The tour coincided with the 1960 presidential campaigns of Kennedy and Nixon, both of whom the traveller saw in action at rallies.

Eric Scott Julian Miller was born on September 26, 1932, the oldest of eight children of Eric Miller, QC, and his wife Rita (nee Clarke). He grew up in Vaucluse, was sent to the Blue Mountains during the war and was a boarder at St Joseph's College at Hunters Hill.

In 1950 he entered the University of Sydney and started a veterinary science course. However, a year later he opted to pursue a long cherished wish to prepare for the priesthood, beginning with 18 months of philosophy at the Springwood seminary. Cardinal Norman Gilroy then sent him to Rome in September 1952 to complete his priestly training at the Propaganda Fide College.

He enjoyed many mind-expanding Roman experiences, one being the companionship of 240 other seminarians from over 40 countries. Miller, in turn, made a still-remembered contribution to the life of the international missionary college.

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After being ordained in Rome in 1956, Miller accepted the chance to study at Oxford and graduated with a degree in history in 1960.

His first home appointment, in 1961, was as curate to Bishop Thomas Muldoon in the Mosman parish. Elderly parishioners still remember with delight the ministry and preaching of two gregarious and eloquent clerics.

Miller's role for over a decade after Mosman was on the staff of St Patrick's Seminary, Manly, where he taught church history and patrology.

It was the time of the Second Vatican Council, which addressed relations between the Catholic Church and the modern world. Miller was enthused by its reforms.

Some of his former students, several of whom became bishops, remember him as "a breath of fresh air" in what had been a staid institution. In the final few years of his appointment he was director of students and vice-president.

The young priest was also attracting public attention through television and radio work, as a lecturer giving courses to religious women and men and because of his active commitment to ecumenism. He also did part-time parish work in Harbord and had a key role in the formation of the National Council of Priests.

However, in 1974, Miller took indefinite leave as a result of what was later recognised as an undiagnosed bipolar disorder.

His meeting Meg Stevens, at a time of a deep depression, led to marriage in 1983. He also went back to teaching, first at Cranbrook and then at St Joseph's.

After retirement in 1997 the couple moved from Annandale to Bowral, where they soon became active members of the community, in particular in both the Anglican and Catholic parishes. Julian also lectured on the history of Christianity for the University of the Third Age.

Together they enjoyed more travel, highlights being return visits to Rome, Oxford and the US, as well as several journeys around Meg's much-loved Greece.